Brand New Art Event At Sydney Laneway

We're proud to announce a a brand new art event as part of this year's Sydney festival, curated by our friends at Sydney College of the Arts (SCA).

Laneway has settled into its new home at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney, with 2012 marking our third year at this great location.

For the first time at the festival, this year SCA will present the work of cutting edge Australian visual artists through a series of site-specific installations, sculpture, video, intervention and performance works. The art event will give you the chance to experience contemporary art by students and graduates of SCA, curated in three parts by leading Australian artists and SCA lecturers: Robyn Backen, Caleb Kelly and Ryszard Dabek.

We're excited to both be holding the festival once again within the sandstone ambiance of Kirkbride, and to be hosting, with SCA, this unique, festival-only art event, which will showcase the work of cutting edge artists alongside this year's amazing line-up.

The Curators

Caleb Kelly

The First Year Coordinator at SCA, Kelly is no stranger to producing music events locally and internationally. He has a reputation for experimental projects, including impermanent.audio, High Reflections, Typhoon and What is Music?, has published on the staging of experimental music in Australia and written a book on the destructive use of turntables and CD players for the generation of audio in expanded sound arts practices.

One of Australia’s leading installation artists and the Master of Studio Art Coordinator at SCA, Backen has curated a selection of artworks that actively engage and explore the surrounds of Callan Park and the SCA Campus grounds, located in the historic Kirkbride buildings. Kirkbride was originally constructed in 1883 as a state-of-the-art mental hospital and in 1996 SCA moved into the breathtaking grounds, which have for the past three years also been an exciting and interactive site for the Sydney Laneway.

The works in Backen’s program respond to the surrounding site, with the artists installing pre-existing work and new site-specific installations, performances and interventions, which act as light, movement and sound beacons. Festival-goers will first encounter these subtle interventions at the entry gates to the Laneway event.

Among the artists are Donald Briersley, Bryden Williams and Alex Pye, who have recently completed the Bachelor of Visual Arts and Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at SCA; and artists Jason Christopher, Stevie Fieldsend and Sarah Mockford, who are all studying at the SCA Graduate School.

Ryszard Dabek

Ryszard Dabek’s practice encompasses a number of mediums, including moving image, sound and photography. It engages with the recent past and in particular the idea of a present haunted by the legacy of the 20th century.

Dabek, the Master of Interactive and Digital Media Coordinator at SCA, has extended the themes from his own practice to the program of videos on display at the Laneway Festival. The compilation, representing work by current students and recent graduates, covers a range of approaches to the moving image, from stop-motion animation to performance documentation. The works not only reveal the diversity of practices that SCA fosters, but also reflect upon the distinct uneasiness of the times in which we live.

St. Jerome's Laneway Festival is about leading new and revered seminal music. The festival has always been interested in finding what's fresh and great and bringing it to unique settings and surrounds to be appreciated by music lovers.

The size of the festivals, the locations and the way we encourage community all form part of the way in which the Laneway team strive to present a live music experience like no other.